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1. Time for VCDL meeting in Richmond on August 5th
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The meeting time for the Richmond membership meeting on Thursday, August 5th: 7:30 PM. Fellowship starts at 7 PM.
UNO's Restaurant
13933 Hull Street Road
Midlothian VA 23112
As with all membership meetings, it is open to the public, so bring a friend!
7th Congressional District candidate, Floyd Bayne, will briefly address the meeting.
The restaurant serves alcohol, so those of you with a CHP who choose to carry... can carry however you please! ;-) (Wahoo!)
Map & directions:
http://tinyurl.com/28qd8x3******************************
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2. Help still needed for the VCDL booth at the Chantilly gun show this weekend
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We need a few more warm bodies to man the VCDL booth at this very large and important gun show on July 30, 31, and August 1.
Please contact Danny Paulson at
NOVAgunshows@vcdl.org to help in Chantilly.
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3. Guns: The untold truth
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Dan Chuchro emailed me this:
From:
actionamerica.org:
http://tinyurl.com/29rtopu[SNIP]
GUNS
The Untold Truth
John Gaver
November 29, 1999
Updated October 17, 2005
Forget everything that you've been told about guns. Ignore the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution. Disregard all of the dramatic press reports. Regardless of how good the arguments on either side of this issue may seem to their proponents, most of them will have absolutely no effect upon their detractors. That is because they do not answer the single most important question to all involved.
What About ME?
What about ME? What about MY personal safety? What about MY children? What about MY family? Regardless of which side of the fence you are on, it all comes down to the question of your own personal safety and that of your loved ones. Any argument that does not address this question will fall on deaf ears.
With that in mind, let me demonstrate conclusively that any restriction placed upon gun ownership is not only contrary to your best interest, but does in fact, increase the likelihood that you or a loved one will become the victim of a violent crime.
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4. VCDL carry cards now available in .pdf
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At the bottom of the "VA Concealed Carry" page on the VCDL web site you'll find the VCDL carry card in PDF format so you can print your own cards.
VA Concealed Carry page:
http://www.vcdl.org/static/ccw.htmlLink to Carry Cards:
http://www.vcdl.org/pdf/VCDLCarry_Card.pdf******************************
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5. VA-ALERT reader more than just an informed reader
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Billy Walsh emailed me this:
--
What a blast from the past item #17 was in the VCDL Alert 7/21, when reader John Pepper corrected some long-held and often touted myths and misconceptions about shooting. I knew John back in the late seventies and early eighties when I was Chief Defense Pistol Instructor at the Lafayette Gun Club in York County and twice directed the IPSC National Championships. John is truly one of the Grand Masters of weaponcraft and is the sole inventor of the target system that revolutionized combat pistolcraft in 1979-80, now in use throughout the world, the Pepper Popper. Jeff Cooper himself declared John a Combat Master. To my knowledge, only a dozen men have such a credential. In John's case it is more than earned. In my opinion, he is one of the ten most influential men of the 20th century in the art and craft of weaponry. The Popper changed everything.
Billy Walsh
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6. VA-ALERT reader: more on Coriolis Effect
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James Cramp emailed me this:
--
Philip:
I noted the reference to the rail guns and the Coriolis effect in the 7/21/10 VCDL update.
"The Paris gun was used to shell Paris at a range of 120 km (75 miles). The distance was so far that the Coriolis effect -- the rotation of the Earth -- was substantial enough to affect trajectory calculations. The gun was fired at an azimuth of 232 degrees (west-southwest) from Crepy-en Laon, which was at a latitude of 49.5 degrees North. The gunners had to account for the fact that the projectiles landed to the right of where they would have hit if there were no Coriolis effect."
As a matter of fact, you do not need extreme range for the coriolis effect to cause inaccuracy with artillery. I was the fire direction control computer for an 8-inch howitzer battery in 1971 and every fire mission calculation included a correction for coriolis effect. The 8-inch howitzer has a maximum range of 18,500 yards (10.5 miles). A correction was also applied to the shorter range 105 mm and 155 mm howitzers.
Regards,
James Cramp
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7. More on the Firearms Owners Protection Act
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John Pepper emailed me this:
--
Hey Philip, Eugene's brief on the Firearms Owners Protection Act is brief leaving out various modes of transportation such as on foot. His example of Virginia to Vermont was the same example I used when holding self defense firearms classes. Vermont as we know has almost no gun laws past limited reasonable ones regarding the safe discharge of firearms.
Traveling by foot history goes back to prehistory origin of man going back unknown multiple hundreds of thousands of years or more and is still the primary way that humans travel the horse and motor vehicle being a drop in the bucket of time since coming into use as a mode of transport. Since the law does not specifically identify the exact mode of transportation being used or ban travel by various means then logically one may travel anywhere by foot or other means under the protection of this law. This did come up during the previously mentioned classes I held. Yes people who own guns do walk to Vermont from Virginia and other points South. To Maine if on the Appalachian trail. Interpretation comes into play on this as the firearm would necessarily be carried on the persons body in some manner that on passing through various States it could be considered inaccessible. The best I could do in advising after explaining the laws requirements was: Put the firearm in a backpack unloaded with some type of locking device on the backpack. Since a stretch of the trail goes through New Jersey do not have any hollow point ammunition with you which is forbidden in that State. Being prudent advised that transported firearm not be in a caliber used by New Jersey police so it would be difficult for them to salt or plant a round of the hollow point ammunition they use on you. Also to avoid firearms related logos, emblems, brassards etc. These are considered evidence in New Jersey for stopping one for their version of a legal probable cause search. - - - - So far have not heard back from any of the student hikers which spans back to the Firearms Owners Protection Act going into effect.
No test case yet that we know of.
Other interesting modes of transportation also came up the next most common being coastal travel by boat. This was figured out as knowing were one was as to navigation and having a locked container on board away from control area as our interpretation. Heard of no test cases on this either. In one instance averted a woman student boaters possible life sentence for possession of a firearm just by chance. She cruised the coast fairly often making some stops in the Caribbean and as far north as Maine. At the time much hijacking of boats by drug runners was going on so on advice of a friend she bought an M-16 select fire rifle, paid the legal tax stamp and approved by ATF documentation. The defense class she took was for pistol, but by chance she mentioned her rifle being brought along on her cruises. She said one of her favorite stops was Boston. Ye Gods. The worst place to be caught with a machine gun legally registered by the feds or not. Mere possession there can carry up to a life sentence. Explained this to her. She seemed shocked then skeptical. A week later she calls me with a thank you. She ran it by her attorney who confirmed it. She sold the rifle and bought a couple of 12 gauge semiautomatic shotguns, slugs and buckshot loads on my advice. She liked the idea of the slugs making bigger holes in any craft that pulled along side and my suggestion that buckshot spread of shot allowed for less precise aim from a boat in motion. Also legal at most stops she may make.
Near end of this life after a lifetime of gunning will make this experienced observation. A great portion of gun owners have no idea of the many restrictive gun laws of their State or Federal laws and go merrily on their way transporting guns around illegally at times yet with no intent of breaking the law. Only a small number of gun owners belong to gun clubs, leagues, fish and game associations etc. who generally are fairly well informed. Here in Maryland we have a seven day waiting period not counting weekends or holidays if one purchases a pistol or certain listed shotguns and rifles. I have come across people who after the wait and approval of purchase think the State Police purchase approval is a permit to carry concealed and do so in ignorance with no intent. Fairly recently a requirement to purchase has one have to sit through about a half hour presentation brief on the law and safety so I suppose a bit less of the ignorance prevails. I personally was dead set against this requirement which is clearly an infringement, but the political machine in Annapolis didn't.
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8. The Catholic Virginian: New gun law
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Here is a very succinct and well written response to the Catholic Virginian's anti-gun rant. Brandon Blackmoor emailed me this:
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"Why would anyone plan to dine in a restaurant or bar where they thought there might be trouble requiring a gun to keep them safe from harm?"
If I
knew there would be trouble, I wouldn't be there at all. Most of us do not wear seatbelts, have fire extinguishers, and carry firearms because we
intend to get into car accidents, to walk into burning buildings, and to be attacked men larger and stronger than we are. We have these things because the world is an uncertain place, and responsible people take reasonable precautions to protect themselves and their loved ones.
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9. Coverage of York County discharge repeal
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From:
www.dailypress.com:
http://tinyurl.com/2e8g3v8After two year debate York board repeals restrictions on shooting guns in some neighborhoods
Daily Press
6:44 a.m. EDT, July 21, 2010
After nearly two years debating the future of York's firearm discharge ordinances, a split Board of Supervisors Tuesday night narrowly repealed the county's restrictions on shooting guns in certain neighborhoods but decided to retain a restriction against firing guns larger than .22 caliber.
After a nearly two hour discussion -- that included a public hearing that drew 21 speakers -- two 3-2 votes finally drew the debate to a close.
In the first, supervisors Thomas Shepperd, Walt Zaremba and Sheila Noll succeeded in removing the firing resriction on all guns larger than .22 caliber from the original proposal. Then, in a second vote, supervisors Shepperd, George Hrichak and Don Wiggins voted to throw out the county's ordinance that restricted firing a gun in about 60 designated neighborhoods.
During the public hearing -- that was based on an original proposal to rescind both the geographic and caliber-specific restrictions -- six county residents spoke in favor of retaining the rules. In addition, nine more county residents spoke in favor of scuttling the restrictions. Six more speakers -- most if not all of whom wore holstered hand guns -- were Second Amendment advocates who had traveled from as far as Northern Virginia to urge repeal of the county ordinances.
Much of the supervisors debate centered on whether state laws would adequately protect residents.
During the discussion, York- Poquoson Sheriff Danny Diggs, an avowed gun rights advocate, repeatedly stated his belief that county restrictions were redundant,unnecessary and hadn't been used.
Diggs said the county ordinance provided nothing but "extra feel good."
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10. Editorial: The gun loophole for mall cops
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Roanoke Times doing a little frothing at the mouth:
From:
www.roanoke.com:
http://tinyurl.com/2dwfdzlEditorial: The gun loophole for mall cops
Virginia should not allow citizens to fire their guns in public without good reason.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
On Monday, the J.C. Penney Co. security guard who fired his gun in the Valley View Mall parking lot got off scot-free. A judge tossed the charge that Dler Anwar Anwar had recklessly handled his firearm. It was the right decision under Virginia law. Virginia law needs an update.
In March, Anwar and another guard chased a suspected shoplifter into the mall parking lot. Anwar initially said his gun fell from his waistband and went off. When police questioned him later, he changed his story to say that he had fired a warning shot into the air. His employer did not authorize him to carry a weapon at work, but he has a concealed carry permit.
Anwar's second story cleared a path for his defense. Virginia allows deadly force in making a citizen's arrest if the person believes a felony has occurred. Fortunately for Anwar, the goods stolen by the shoplifter were worth more than $200. Less than that ludicrously low limit and the theft would have been only a misdemeanor. It must not have been a big sale day.
Anwar's attorney was none other than House of Delegates Majority Leader Morgan Griffith. Kudos to him for representing his client vigorously and successfully.
If he returns to Richmond next year, maybe he and other lawmakers can tighten up the law he now understands in such detail.
The commonwealth should not tolerate the sort of recklessness Anwar exhibited. Laws should promote public safety, and needlessly shooting in a public place is decidedly unsafe.
It is ridiculous that Anwar's fake story -- accidentally dropping the gun -- would have gotten him in more legal trouble than the intentional firing of a firearm in the parking lot of a crowded mall.
At a minimum, the deadly force provision for citizen arrests ought to require some sort of imminent threat. Better yet, broaden the language for reckless handling of a firearm in public to encompass all incidents that do not involve self-defense or protecting someone else's life.
Running off with some J.C. Penney's goods puts no one's life in peril. Hastily shooting in a parking lot does.
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11. Chesterfield Park Shooting -- alledged "illegal signage" prohibiting firearms
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Chesterfield County has a sign on some basketball courts that illegally bans weapons from the court. As can be expected, this did nothing to prevent a shooting there.
Peter Martin emailed me this:
From:
www.nbc12.com:
http://tinyurl.com/2fev6ewUPDATE: Arrest made in Rockwood Park shooting
Posted: Jul 21, 2010 5:04 AM
Updated: Jul 21, 2010 11:28 AM
By Gene Petriello bio | email
CHESTERFIELD, VA (WWBT) - Chesterfield Police have made an arrest after an alleged fight during a basketball game led to a shooting at a popular county park.
Mathew David Vance, 18, of the 3400 block of Newby's Bridge Road was arrested during a traffic stop at around 12:30 a.m. this morning and charged with possession of marijuana, felonious assault, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and discharge of a firearm in a public place.
He is currently being held pending a hearing Thursday morning at 11 a.m. in Chesterfield County General District Court.
The shooting happened around 7 p.m. Tuesday night at Rockwood Park on Courthouse Road is in Chesterfield.
Police say this all started with an altercation near the basketball court. They say a male involved pulled out a gun a fired toward a crowd.
One person was hit. That person was taken to the hospital and is listed in stable condition.
Stephanie Williams is out with her dog, Sonny for their daily walk around Rockwood Park on Wednesday morning. This, just hours after a violent fight and shooting near these basketball courts.
"Normally, there are a lot of families out here walking and for something like that to happen, in the daytime, whoever did it, just didn't care," says Williams.
Police say at some point during that fight around 7 p.m., a man involved pulled out a gun and started shooting. One person was shot and sent to the hospital.
Babysitter of two, Cori Steppe is on her first trip to the park. "With two of them I have to keep a closer eye on them anyway's! I'm sure I'll be more observant of what's going on now here at the park," says Steppe.
We're told several years ago, there was a shooting at the park. But until Tuesday, nothing like that happened again.
Although a sign near the basketball courts say no weapons are allowed on the courts, the county parks department says there is nothing they can do to stop someone from carrying a gun at the park, if they have the proper permits.
That's something investigators are looking into now with this latest shooting.
Still, many of those we talked with aren't ready to pull the plug on this park.
"I've never felt anything less than totally safe in the park," says park-goer Pattie Jacocks.
"I think more than anything, I'm disappointed because it gives the park a bad name," says Williams.
Right now, park supervisors say they are going to be talking with police to see if there will be any additional security put in place following this shooting. At this point, that has not happened yet. These parks are patrolled by the county police department.
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12. Retired Va. police superintendent says guns like "candy bar at a candy store"
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Retired Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Massengill continues to be an embarrassment to those who understand the Constitution.
Here he continues attacking gun shows.
He talks about all the out-of-state license plates at gun shows in Richmond, for example. Where does he think all those hundreds of gun show vendors are coming from? And even if the vehicles don't belong to a vendor, but a citizen of a surrounding state who as come to Virginia to attend the show, so what? Almost everything sold at a gun show can be purchased legally by someone from another state. That includes guns (which are sent to an FFL in the purchaser's home state for pickup), holsters, food, ammunition, and most importantly VCDL stickers and clothes. ;-)
Fortunately, there isn't a whole lot of interest in what Massengill has to say on the subject.
Marc Montoni emailed me this:
--
From:
www.virginiastatehousenewsonline.com:
http://tinyurl.com/2bqwfsx******************************
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13. RTD: The ugly racial history of gun control
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Board member Dennis O'Connor emailed me this:
--
From:
www.timesdispatch.com:
http://tinyurl.com/2czsploThe Ugly Racial History of Gun Control
By Staff Reports | Times-Dispatch
Published: July 18, 2010
Richmond, Va. -- *Editor's note: In his concurring statement in 'McDonald v. Chicago' -- the Supreme Court case affirming that the Second Amendment ensures an individual right to own firearms -- Justice Clarence Thomas discussed the history of gun-control laws, whose purpose was to stifle the rights of minorities and to prevent African-Americans from defending themselves against the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. Excerpts from Thomas' opinion appear below.
In the contentious years leading up to the Civil War, those who sought to retain the institution of slavery found that to do so, it was necessary to eliminate more and more of the basic liberties of slaves, free blacks, and white abolitionists. Congressman Tobias Plants explained that slaveholders "could not hold [slaves] safely where dissent was permitted," so they decided that "all dissent must be suppressed by the strong hand of power."
The measures they used were ruthless, repressed virtually every right recognized in the Constitution, and demonstrated that preventing only discriminatory state firearms restrictions would have been a hollow assurance for liberty. Public reaction indicates that the American people understood this point. The overarching goal of pro-slavery forces was to repress the spread of abolitionist thought and the concomitant risk of a slave rebellion.
Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the extent to which fear of a slave uprising gripped slaveholders and dictated the acts of Southern legislatures. Slaves and free blacks represented a substantial percentage of the population and posed a severe threat to Southern order if they were not kept in their place. According to the 1860 Census, slaves represented one quarter or more of the population in 11 of the 15 slave States, nearly half the population in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana, and more than 50 percent of the population in Mississippi and South Carolina.
. . .
The Southern fear of slave rebellion was not unfounded. Although there were others, two particularly notable slave uprisings heavily influenced slaveholders in the South. In 1822, a group of free blacks and slaves led by Denmark Vesey planned a rebellion in which they would slay their masters and flee to Haiti. The plan was foiled, leading to the swift arrest of 130 blacks, and the execution of 37, including Vesey.
Still, slaveowners took notice -- it was reportedly feared that as many as 6,600 to 9,000 slaves and free blacks were involved in the plot. A few years later, the fear of rebellion was realized. An uprising led by Nat Turner took the lives of at least 57 whites before it was suppressed.
The fear generated by these and other rebellions led Southern legislatures to take particularly vicious aim at the rights of free blacks and slaves to speak or to keep and bear arms for their defense. Teaching slaves to read (even the Bible) was a criminal offense punished severely in some States. Virginia made it a crime for a member of an "abolition" society to enter the State and argue "that the owners of slaves have no property in the same, or advocate or advise the abolition of slavery."
Other States prohibited the circulation of literature denying a master's right to property in his slaves and passed laws requiring postmasters to inspect the mails in search of such material. Many legislatures amended their laws prohibiting slaves from carrying firearms to apply the prohibition to free blacks as well.
Florida made it the "duty" of white citizen "patrol[s] to search negro houses or other suspected places, for firearms." If they found any firearms, the patrols were to take the offending slave or free black "to the nearest justice of the peace," whereupon he would be "severely punished" by "whipping on the bare back, not exceeding 39 lashes," unless he could give a "plain and satisfactory" explanation of how he came to possess the gun.
. . .
Southern blacks were not alone in facing threats to their personal liberty and security during the antebellum era. Mob violence in many Northern cities presented dangers as well . . .
After the Civil War, Southern anxiety about an uprising among the newly freed slaves peaked. As Representative Thaddeus Stevens is reported to have said, "[W]hen it was first proposed to free the slaves, and arm the blacks, did not half the nation tremble? The prim conservatives, the snobs, and the male waiting-maids in Congress, were in hysterics."
As the Court explains, this fear led to "systematic efforts" in the "old Confederacy" to disarm the more than 180,000 freedmen who had served in the Union Army, as well as other free blacks. Some States formally prohibited blacks from possessing firearms. Others enacted legislation prohibiting blacks from carrying firearms without a license, a restriction not imposed on whites. Additionally, "[T]hroughout the South, armed parties, often consisting of ex-Confederate soldiers serving in the state militias, forcibly took firearms from newly freed slaves."
As the Court makes crystal clear, if the Fourteenth Amendment "had outlawed only those laws that discriminate on the basis of race or previous condition of servitude, African-Americans in the South would likely have remained vulnerable to attack by many of their worst abusers: the state militia and state peace officers."
In the years following the Civil War, a law banning firearm possession outright "would have been nondiscriminatory only in the formal sense," for it would have "left firearms in the hands of the militia and local peace officers."
Evidence suggests that the public understood this at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. The publicly circulated Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction extensively detailed these abuses, and statements by citizens indicate that they looked to the Committee to provide a federal solution to this problem.
. . .
One way in which the Federal Government responded was to issue military orders countermanding Southern arms legislation . . . .The significance of these steps was not lost on those they were designed to protect. After one such order was issued, The Christian Recorder, published by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, published the following editorial:
"We have several times alluded to the fact that the Constitution of the United States, guaranties to every citizen the right to keep and bear arms . . . .All men, without the distinction of color, have the right to keep arms to defend their homes, families, or themselves.
"We are glad to learn that [the] Commissioner for this State . . . has given freedmen to understand that they have as good a right to keep fire arms as any other citizens. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, and we will be governed by that at present."
The same month, The Loyal Georgian carried a letter to the editor asking "Have colored persons a right to own and carry fire arms? -- A Colored Citizen." The editors responded as follows:
"Almost every day, we are asked questions similar to the above. We answer certainly you have the same right to own and carry fire arms that other citizens have. You are not only free but citizens of the United States and, as such, entitled to the same privileges granted to other citizens by the Constitution of the United States . . . ."
These statements are consistent with the arguments of abolitionists during the antebellum era that slavery, and the slave States' efforts to retain it, violated the constitutional rights of individuals -- rights the abolitionists described as among the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The problem abolitionists sought to remedy was that, under Dred Scott, blacks were not entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens under the Federal Constitution and that, in many States, whatever inalienable rights state law recognized did not apply to blacks . . . .
Cruikshank's holding that blacks could look only to state governments for protection of their right to keep and bear arms enabled private forces, often with the assistance of local governments, to subjugate the newly freed slaves and their descendants through a wave of private violence designed to drive blacks from the voting booth and force them into peonage, an effective return to slavery. Without federal enforcement of the inalienable right to keep and bear arms, these militias and mobs were tragically successful in waging a campaign of terror against the very people the Fourteenth Amendment had just made citizens.
Take, for example, the Hamburg Massacre of 1876.There, a white citizen militia sought out and murdered a troop of black militiamen for no other reason than that they had dared to conduct a celebratory Fourth of July parade through their mostly black town. The white militia commander, "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, later described this massacre with pride: "[T]he leading white men of Edgefield" had decided "to seize the first opportunity that the negroes might offer them to provoke a riot and teach the negroes a lesson by having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many of them as was justifiable."
. . .
Organized terrorism like that perpetuated by Tillman and his cohorts proliferated in the absence of federal enforcement of constitutional rights. Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces, and the '76 Association spread terror among blacks and white Republicans by breaking up Republican meetings, threatening political leaders, and whipping black militiamen. These groups raped, murdered, lynched, and robbed as a means of intimidating, and instilling pervasive fear in, those whom they despised.
Although Congress enacted legislation to suppress these activities, Klan tactics remained a constant presence in the lives of Southern blacks for decades. Between 1882 and 1968, there were at least 3,446 reported lynchings of blacks in the South. They were tortured and killed for a wide array of alleged crimes, without even the slightest hint of due process. Emmit Till, for example, was killed in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The fates of other targets of mob violence were equally depraved.
The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence. As Eli Cooper, one target of such violence, is said to have explained, "[T]he Negro has been run over for fifty years, but it must stop now, and pistols and shotguns are the only weapons to stop a mob."
Sometimes, as in Cooper's case, self defense did not succeed. He was dragged from his home by a mob and killed as his wife looked on. But at other times, the use of firearms allowed targets of mob violence to survive. One man recalled the night during his childhood when his father stood armed at a jail until morning to ward off lynchers. The experience left him with a sense, "not of powerlessness," but of the "possibilities of salvation" that came from standing up to intimidation
In my view, the record makes plain that the Framers of the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the ratifying-era public understood --just as the Framers of the Second Amendment did -- that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty. The record makes equally plain that they deemed this right necessary to include in the minimum baseline of federal rights that the Privileges or Immunities Clause established in the wake of the War over slavery.
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14. Take a shot . . . at building your own rifle
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Roy Scherer emailed me this:
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Today's [Petersburg] Progress-Index has an article that I found really interesting, reprinted from the Charlottesville Daily Progress, about two guys down in Augusta Springs.
They teach gunsmithing. Students start with $800 and an old cheap Mauser. They end with a customized deer rifle worth about $1,000, plus a gun case, gun vise, gunsmith's screwdriver set, cleaning kit . . . and KNOWLEDGE!
Story ran on p. A-8 in the P-I, but could not find it online. Looking at the CDP, l found the story as of earlier this month. Comments allowed:
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/article/take_ashot/57850/BTW, there's a related podcast at:
http://www.mydailyprogress.com/index.php/multimedia/podcast_article/diy_buildyour_own_rifle/From:
www.dailyprogress.com:
http://tinyurl.com/25uvwc2Take a shot ... at building your own rifle
By BRIAN MCNEILL
Published: July 04, 2010
AUGUSTA SPRINGS - Nick Hamilton peers down the scope of his 7mm bolt-action rifle at a bull's eye target propped up 100 yards away.
Hamilton, a contractor from Fairfax County, built the custom rifle himself that weekend as part of a new do-it-yourself gunsmithing class offered by a pair of Charlottesville-area hunting and firearms experts.
Two days of hard work have culminated in this single moment of truth. Will the rifle - which has never been fired - actually shoot?
Hamilton clicks off the safety and places his index finger over the trigger. His body perfectly still, concentration showing on his face. He squeezes the trigger, ever so slightly.
The rifle fires. Its bullet punches a dime-sized hole through the paper target and kicks up an explosion of dust at the Hite Hollow shooting range in the George Washington National Forest.
"How'd it feel?" asks Paul Fritz, one of the class' two instructors.
"It felt good," Hamilton smiles. "Real good."
"Well, it works. It goes bang," said Jackson Landers, the other instructor. "Hallelujah."
Hamilton is among the first students to take part in Landers' latest venture: a class on how to build a deer-hunting rifle.
Landers - who already teaches a deer-hunting class for beginners interested in the local food movement - wanted to offer a set of skills to the most hardcore do-it-yourselfers.
In late April, Landers wrote on his popular blog,
rule-303.blogspot.com, that he was launching the class "because hunting, field dressing, butchering and cooking your own food isn't quite DIY enough."
"Hunting and butchering your own food is pretty satisfying as it stands," he continued. "Obtaining that food with a tool that you built yourself takes you to a whole new level."
Landers, an insurance broker by day, seems to be on the cusp of garnering a lot of attention. His first book, "A Locavore's Guide to Deer Hunting" is scheduled to come out next year from Storey Publishing, which specializes in books for country living. His Deer Hunting for Locavores class was written up last year in the New York Times. A TV show is in development by Discovery Networks - which owns the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and numerous other channels - is also in the works.
To co-teach his DIY rifle building class, Landers enlisted the aid of Fritz, a trained blacksmith and firearms expert who lives in Troy. While not at his blacksmith's forge or tinkering with firearms in his garage, Fritz works as the information technology director at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello.
Much of the rifle building class takes place in the garage of Fritz's home. The garage is remarkably chockablock full of power tools, welding equipment, rifle parts, ammunition, thick firearms encyclopedias, anvils and much more.
A major aim of the class, Fritz said, is to give the student the ability to build his own rifle, using common tools that can be bought at any hardware store.
"Everything we're using here can be bought at Lowe's," Fritz said. "These are tools that you can find very, very easily."
The DIY rifle class gets underway at just after 9 a.m. last Saturday. Hamilton pulls into Fritz' driveway, after a two-hour drive from Northern Virginia, ready for two days of sweaty labor in the service of his goal to own a rifle he built with his own hands.
"I'm a real do-it-yourselfer with everything," Hamilton says. "I figure, why not with guns too?"
Hamilton took Landers' deer hunting class after reading about it in the New York Times. His chose to take the DIY rifle class, he said, after he imagined what it would be like to hunt with a gun he crafted himself.
"Take your first deer with it," he said. "That'd be pretty cool."
Hamilton has brought along an old beat-up Brazilian Mauser rifle, circa 1908, which he will strip down for parts.
Landers, working alongside Hamilton, is stripping down a 1938 Mauser that was used in World War II by the Nazis.
As Landers breaks the rifle down, Nazi insignias are clearly visible on the receiver. Someone - probably a Russian soldier, Landers says - has stamped out three swastikas.
It was apparently picked up off the battlefield by the Russians, as it was kept in storage in Russia for years until it made its way into the American surplus market, Landers said.
Mausers, he explains, have been in use around the world since the late 1800s. Many of the parts are often interchangeable, no matter which country it came from. And they can be picked up for $50 to $200 at gun shows or from many used gun dealers.
From their pair of old Mausers, Hamilton and Landers remove the mechanical heart of the rifles: the receiver and the bolt, which together are known as the action.
They spend hours retooling these parts. At one point, Fritz heats up Hamilton's bolt with a torch while Hamilton bends it by banging it with a three-pound blacksmith's hammer.
The trickiest part of the operation was removing Hamilton's rifle's original barrel from the receiver. It took at least an hour of trying to twist it off with the aid of a wrench, a pipe, a band saw and a six-ton press.
"There you go," Fritz said to Hamilton, as they finally removed the receiver. "You are now the proud owner of a brand-new receiver, only 100 years of use."
An important point about the class, Fritz said, is that the student performs 99 percent of the work on his own rifle, all while under the supervision of Fritz and Landers.
After retooling the original parts and making several other modifications, the action is installed in a new stock. Also added are an after-market trigger, a new scope and a modern safety.
The following day, the trio heads out to the Hite Hollow shooting range, located about an hour west of Charlottesville. The goal is to break in the newly built rifles and zero the scopes with the help of a laser.
They spend a few hours shooting at paper bull's eye targets affixed to cardboard boxes and at bright orange clay targets.
Once finished, Landers said, Hamilton's DIY rifle is the equivalent of a high-end deer-hunting rifle that could retail for more than $1,000.
The class costs $800 and students are asked to bring along their own Mauser rifles for parts. At the completion of the class, the students will have their own deer hunting rifle, a gun case, a gun vise, a gunsmith's screwdriver set and a cleaning kit.
"Everyone else in the world takes their gun to a gunsmith," Fritz said to Hamilton. "Not you. You'll get to say, 'I built this.'"
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15. Blog: Did Sotomayor commit perjury?
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Michael Soh emailed me this:
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Hey Phil,
I put together a page about how Sotomayor testified at her Senate confirmation hearing and how she ruled on McDonald v. Chicago. I always link to sources. The NRA brought up the idea. I just editoralized it.
From:
www.mikesoh.com:
http://tinyurl.com/23al22aDid Sotomayor commit perjury?
Jul 21, 2010
During her confirmation hearings, VT Senator Patrick Leahy asked Judge Sonya Sotomayor many questions having to do with her beliefs and various rulings already made by the Supreme Court. Many conservatives voted her down because of how slippery her answers were. And now that she is a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, one must ask: was she being truthful in her testimony?
In their monthly magazine, the NRA cited how Justice Sotomayor stated one thing about gun rights and then dissented in the recent McDonald v. Chicago decision.
Sen. Leahy: Is it safe to say that you accept the Supreme Court's decision as establishing that the Second Amendment right is an individual right? Is that correct?
Judge Sotomayor: Yes, sir.
Leahy: Thank you. And in the Second Circuit decision, Maloney v. Cuomo, you, in fact, recognized the Supreme Court decided in Heller that the personal right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the Constitution against federal law restrictions. Is that correct?
Sotomayor: It is.
Leahy: And you accept and applied the Heller decision when you decided Maloney?
Sotomayor: Completely, sir. I accepted and applied established Supreme Court precedent that the Supreme Court in its own opinion in Heller acknowledged, answered the -- a different question.
The NRA points out that in the McDonald v. Chicago decision, she dissented and agreed with her liberal colleague Justice Breyer. He states in his dissenting opinion (pg. 210), "In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense."
If Sotomayor recognized that the "personal right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment", why did she agree with Breyer? Normally, if a justice agrees in part, they will provide their own dissent. Sotomayor did not do this. Stevens, who also dissented with the majority opinion, filed his own dissent. Sotomayor has filed her own dissents before. So why not in this case?
Somewhere, she lied. She either lied during her confirmation hearings or she lied on the bench. Either way, Congress should investigate and find out. Hopefully, if the Republicans retake the House in November, they will start impeachment proceedings.
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16. Ten good reasons to ban guns
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From an anonymous post on a message board. Bob Johnson emailed me this tongue-in-cheek piece:
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Ten Good Reasons To Ban Guns.
1. Guns are used in self-defense over 2 million times a year. However, this makes the attempted crime a "non-event," which necessarily complicates the Police investigation. Without civilian ownership of guns, these Police investigations would not have been compromised. Civilians should leave crime prevention to the Police, who are properly equipped to investigate following the crime's completion.
2. Some .004 % (4/1000 of 1%) of guns are used in crime each year. This is way too high. All guns should be banned.
3. Guns are unnecessary. In 98% of civilian gun defenses, no shot is fired. If you are not going to fire a shot, you clearly don't need a gun. This proves that the guns are unnecessary. Banning guns will prevent these unnecessary defenses.
4. Guns cause criminal migration. In tough gun-law Washington, D. C., violent crime rates are very high. This high crime rate is caused by the migration of criminals from gun havens like Virginia. This migration is caused by the criminal's cowardly avoidance of armed householders and concealed-carry civilians. This criminal migration is detrimental to helpless unarmed citizens in no-gun areas and must be stopped. Therefore, guns should be banned everywhere.
5. Most gun crimes are committed by inner city gangs and drug dealers. These relatively small and geographically restricted groups consistently commit the majority of gun crimes, which usually peak as turf wars erupt over Drug War changes. The best way to prevent this is by denying guns to all law abiding people everywhere.
6. No woman needs to protect herself from rape, assault or murder. The Police will protect women by investigating the crime after the fact. Remember, Police paperwork is all the protection anyone really needs.
7. Guns owners are disrespectful of authority. Good citizens should completely rely on the authorities. A failure to do so is an invariable sign of improper and overly independent attitudes. Failure to completely and absolutely trust and depend on the authorities is excessive democracy and sends a bad message to children.
8. Guns owners engaging in self-defense are taking the law into their own hands. This is wrong. Only the Police and Criminals have the right to take the law into their own hands. Guns should be kept out of the hands of law abiding citizens.
9. Children and young people should remain ignorant about guns. Real guns and real gun knowledge dissipate the fantasies created by violent video games and TV. Ignorance, once lost, can never be restored and needs to be protected. Not to mention the lost sales of all the violent movies, TV shows, video games, etc!
10. Guns reduce people's reliance on the Police and Government. This fosters a mistaken belief in "rights". No person has the right to question authority. No person should be less than 100% dependent on authority. This is fundamental to social order. Banning guns will help to establish the Order the authorities want. This is good.
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17. On guns in video games
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From:
www.thefirearmblog.com:
http://tinyurl.com/23fxrdm[SNIP]
Guns in games are like guns in movies: it is all about looks, sounds and cliches. Just like in the movies, games have established a certain perception of weapons in the mind of the public and just like in movies games get almost everything wrong. Many of us in the game industry know this. Because games are looking more realistic and appear to simulating reality better but the guns do not, a common misconception is that those of us in the game industry don't know anything about guns. The fact is that we are not trying to simulate reality but are creating products to provide entertainment.
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18. Pocket semi-auto comparison chart
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Bob Johnson emailed me this:
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From:
www.mouseguns.com:
http://tinyurl.com/26v2kj2******************************
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19. Coyotes in the State of Nature
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Bill Cowardin emailed me this:
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From:
www.nationalreview.com:
http://tinyurl.com/2w27mt4KEVIN WILLIAMSON
JULY 17, 2010 4:00 A.M.
Coyotes in the State of Nature
From the July 19, 2010, issue of NR.
Here's a two-Americas story for you: Westchester County, in the suburbs of New York City, was home to Hillary Clinton when she pretended to represent New York in the U.S. Senate, and its voters gave Barack Obama 63 percent of their ballots in 2008. It's the sort of place that causes heavy breathing among the liberal faithful de voutly awaiting the coming of the New Democratic Majority, that blessed condition that will enrapture America when formerly Republican white suburbanites once and for all join forces with the traditional Democratic coalition of ward heelers and welfare recipients in common cause against the pro-lifers, gun nuts, and tea-partying Palin enthusiasts of the GOP. So sayeth the Gospel according to Paul Begala.
But Westchester County has a prob lem more often seen in rural, Republican-leaning jurisdictions: coyotes. These ca nine predators are a real menace, a fact that was dramatically illustrated in late June by the case of young Emily Hod u lik, age six, who was attacked by a pair of coyotes on a leafy suburban street in the quaint town of Rye. The coyotes' offensive proceeded along classically predatory lines as the canines ignored the other children in the group and targeted the smallest, weakest child. Miss Hodulik suffered serious bite wounds but escaped without life-threatening injuries. She's undergoing a series of rabies shots, doesn't like to sleep alone, and is afraid that there are coyotes in the basement of the family home. Local officials have warned Westchester residents to keep an eye out for the beasts, especially if they have small children.
Coyotes like to attack the little ones, human or otherwise. That was the case for one unfortunate coyote that attacked a puppy out for a jog with his master in Travis County, Texas, in the suburbs of Austin, where coyotes have it a little rougher than they do in suburban New York. That particular coyote had the bad luck to set his gaze on a puppy owned by Gov. Rick Perry, who produced a laser-sighted .380-caliber automatic pistol, loaded with hollowpoints, and sent it to the Happy Hunting Grounds.
Governor Perry made light of the epi sode -- he later signed a peace treaty with the San Antonio Spurs' coyote mascot -- but the gunplay riled more than a few liberals. A Huffington Post story about it received more than 3,000 reader comments, many of them mocking in tone, most aghast that the governor was packing his own laser-sighted heat. Some of them bemoaned the suburban sprawl that is encroaching on the coyotes' natural habitat, all but demanding a collective examination of conscience: Why do the coyotes hate us? Never mind that coyotes have turned up in Central Park, or that one recent deadly coyote attack -- ending the life of a young Canadian folk singer -- happened on a hiking trail in a national park. Evolution bred coyotes to be predators. They are what they are, and sometimes they have to be shot.
People have a visceral reaction to guns, which is why the reactions to the Supreme Court's recent decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago have been so emotional. One extraordinarily telling reaction came from David Ignatius of the Washington Post, whose response was headlined: "The Supreme Court Gun Decision Moves Us Toward Anarchy." Mr. Ignatius wrote: "My biggest worry with Monday's Supreme Court decision is that by ruling, in effect, that every American can apply for a gun license, the justices will make gun ownership much more pervasive in a society that already has too many guns. After all, if I know that my neighbor is armed and preparing for Armageddon situations where law and order break down (as so many are -- just read the right-wing blogs) then I have to think about protecting my family, too. That's the state-of-nature, everyone for himself logic that prevails in places such as Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan."
Mr. Ignatius here is remarkably forthcoming: He is not worried about guns in the hands of criminals, but about guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, people who are willing to apply for a permit and jump through the bureaucratic hoops re quired of gun buyers. His nightmare is not an America in which criminals run amok with Glocks, or even an America in which gun permits are handed out liberally, but an America in which "every American can apply for a gun license." Never mind the approval of licenses, the mere application gives Mr. Ignatius the howling fantods. It is wonderfully apt that he references the "state of nature" in his criticism, imagining a Hobbesian version of life in these United States: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, permeated by the aroma of cordite. Mr. Ignatius, like Thomas Hobbes, is casting his lot with Leviathan and makes no apology for it.
That is the essence of 21st-century progressivism: In matters ranging from financial derivatives to education to gun control, the Left believes that we face a choice between a masterful state and a Hobbesian war of all against all. For all of the smart set's vaunted and self-congratulatory nu ance, it is this absolutist vision, this Manichean horror, that forms the foun dation of progressivism.
This, and not the threat of uncontrollable crime, is really at the heart of the subur ban progressives' abomination of firearms. Coyotes may be an occasional menace, but the predators most commonly stalking Central Park, Westchester County, or the Austin suburbs go on two legs, not four. Just before the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago, there were in one weekend 50-odd shootings in the Windy City, at least ten of them fatal. Some of the shootings were instances of the random and chaotic violence that plagues urban America. Some were more sinister: Two young black men were found stripped naked and shot, face down in the dirt near the railroad tracks on the South Side. As of June, the murder rate in New York City -- which likes to advertise itself as the safest big city in America -- was up 7.2 percent over last year.
But the idea that individuals might use firearms lawfully to defend themselves is either anathema to progressives or inconceivable to them. President Obama's reaction to the Heller decision, the predecessor to McDonald v. Chicago, suffered the in evitable lacunae: "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through commonsense, effective safety measures," he said, unable to consider the possibility that citizens' arming themselves against criminals is one potentially effective safety measure. "As president, I will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun-owners, hunters, and sportsmen. I know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne." Coming from a city of gangland executions, Barack Obama affirms his commitment to Elmer Fudd's blunderbuss, and reasonable people might wonder: What exactly does work in Chicago, Mr. President? That is an unaskable question in the world of Barack Obama, because it is a question that penetrates to the center of his philosophy and exposes it as inadequate.
Violence is traditionally something upon which the state maintains a monopoly, and the application of lethal force is the state's most jealously guarded prerogative. It is treated as a kind of holy office, which is one of the reasons that American executions are such strangely ritualized ceremonies. Under more frankly statist re gimes, executions are much more plebeian affairs: China, for instance, has a mobile "death van," a kind of lethal-injection chamber on wheels, which it uses to dispatch with maximum efficiency those sentenced under one of its 68 varieties of capital offense. The execution vans are manufactured by Jinguan Auto, which also builds fortified limousines for China's burgeoning class of oligarchs, and there's a certain symmetry to that.
To use lethal force in self-defense is the ultimate declaration of independence, a kind of momentary secession from the authority of the government whose laws and prisons and police officers have, in that moment, failed the citizen. To acknowledge the right to self-defense -- and the concomitant right to be forearmed against aggressors -- is to acknowledge that some things are outside the state and its authority, or at least that some moments are outside the state and its authority.
The horror that progressives feel for gun owners is in many ways like the horror they feel for homeschoolers, whom they recognize, correctly, as one of the few truly radical movements in America. Prof. Robin West of Georgetown University's law school offers a typical reaction to the phenomenon: "The husbands and wives in these families feel themselves to be under a religious compulsion to have large families, a homebound and submissive wife and mother who is responsible for the schooling of the children, and only one breadwinner. These families are not living in romantic, rural, self-sufficient farmhouses; they are in trailer parks, 1,000-square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community's overall economic health and their state's tax base." God defend the holy tax base!
Homeschooling families in fact have higher average incomes than non-homeschool families, a fact that Professor West acknowledges and then magics away through the device of the "radically fundamentalist movement family," the one she locates on tarps in parking lots. Like Mr. Ignatius, Professor West is forthright about the statist origins of her horror: "Parents in many states have full authority, free of all state oversight, to determine the content of their children's education," a situation almost as unendurable as life in a 1,000-square-foot house. Professor West writes longingly of the golden age when practically all education was conducted under the tutelage of the state and opting out of the system was forbidden -- and "parents who did so were criminals."
You will not be surprised to read her lamenting a "constitutional culture" dominated by "militias, gun collectors, and ideologues constructing, with little help from courts and no resistance from liberals, an individual Right to Bear Arms." She connects this Second Amendment horror to other challenges to unlimited state supremacy -- the anti-tax movement and citizen border patrols -- and, like David Ignatius, she cites Hobbes, framing the debate as Leviathan vs. anarchy, leaving no room for well-ordered liberty under constitutionally limited government: If those rubes out on the tarps can fill the young skulls of their plenteous broods with any old rubbish, without the least privity or countenance of authority, then they're bound to get funny ideas about guns and taxes and illegal immigrants. And they are bound to chafe at having their lives run by Georgetown law professors.
Just as state schooling is not about education, but about the state, gun control is not about guns: It's about control. A citizen who can fend for himself when the predators come or the schools fail is less inclined to look to the state for sustenance and oversight in other areas of life. To progressives, that's an invitation to anarchy. To the men who wrote the Second Amendment, it was a condition of citizenship in a free republic. It's what free men did, and do.
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20. Guns Save Lives - in South Africa, too
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Michael Driscoll emailed me this:
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The "gun attack" headline doesn't mention that "the family driver returned fire." It is so hard to support that the guns are at fault when they save lives.
From:
www.wtop.com:
http://tinyurl.com/27luh7uMandela grandchildren unhurt after gun attack
July 22, 2010 - 10:11am
By TSHEGO LETSHWITI
Associated Press Writer
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - Nelson Mandela's grandchildren underwent a harrowing ordeal with gunmen following the South African icon's 92nd birthday party, but no one was hurt and the attackers fled after an exchange of gunfire, police said Thursday.
Police spokesman Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said the grandchildren were returning to their Johannesburg home following the family birthday party Sunday when two gunmen approached their car. They ordered the occupants to lie down near the entrance to the home of Mandela's daughter Zindzi.
One fired a shot and the family driver returned fire.
Armed carjackings are common in South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.
Mariemuthoo said police investigations were continuing and no further information was being released.
South African media reported Thursday that expended cartridge cases were collected from the scene by security agents after the incident and a suspected getaway car used by the attackers was later recovered no
